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Cory Conacher didn’t need to be named American Hockey League MVP to stand tall in coach Jon Cooper’s eyes.

Cooper has seen the Burlington, Ont., winger demonstrate some incredible resolve without scoring any of the 41 goals amassed so far during his first pro season with the Norfolk Admirals, now two wins away from beating the Toronto Marlies for the Calder Cup.

“I can talk in glowing terms about a lot of guys on our team, but he has gone through a lot of stuff in his life most people don’t,” Cooper said. “He may be small (5-foot-8, 175 pounds), but you can’t measure the size of his heart.”

Conacher has come this far with Type 1 diabetes, requiring an insulin pump.

“There’s a tube in the side of my hip that it plugs into,” Conacher explained during a break in the best-of-seven Cip final. “When I eat, every three minutes it injects insulin. I turn it off during games because you don’t want to get low on sugar and there’s Gatorade and power bars that I have to eat as well. The pump I have now (parents Dave and Debbie made sure he had the most up-to-date model) actually shows my blood sugar levels. And it has the time of day, so I don’t need to wear a watch.”

When told he had a player with this condition, Cooper was initially apprehensive about how Conacher would fare in the heat of a game.

“Years ago, I coached diabetic kids who had to have needles in their body and that was really hard,” Cooper said. “What’s going on with Cory is a tribute to technology. Rarely does it happen in a game that he is not feeling right. We’re fortunate enough to be in hockey, but he has to deal with that on a lifetime basis.”

Conacher was not drafted by an NHL team. His small build and low profile through Tier II hockey in Burlington and later playing at tiny Canisius College in Buffalo assured that fate. He excelled at Canisius and was a Hobey Baker finalist, but suspects his medical condition might have spooked some NHL scouts as much as his dimensions.

“I’m sure a lot of diabetic kids think they won’t be able to do what they want,” Conacher said. “I’ve decided to go the other route, embrace the challenge. There was Bobby Clarke and a lot of other athletes who played through diabetes.”

Conacher was diagnosed as an eight-year-old. Knowing something was wrong, but not wanting to tell his parents, he tried keeping his frequent night-time trips to the bathroom and his water guzzling a secret until one night they took him to hospital.

“In some ways it’s actually helped me, because I always have to watch what I eat and how I train,” Conacher said.

The Tampa Bay Lightning took the chance on him 11 months ago as a free agent. A six-game points’ streak with Norfolk in October quickly revealed Cooper and the Admirals they were on to something.

“He was just overlooked,” Cooper said. “But he comes to a big boys’ league and steps right in. Cory doesn’t wait for the defenceman to go in first, he goes in himself. When you see that in players, you know you have something unique.”

Conacher was the poster boy for the dog-bites-postman Admirals’ style, joining a group of small and mid-sized forwards that scored a league high 273 goals and were first seed in the East. He took home a trunk load of AHL hardware, its scoring champion with 39, rookie of the year and MVP. As double winner of latter two, he joined an exclusive AHL fraternity that includes Pelle Lindbergh, Stephan Lebeau and Bill Hicke.

Stalled at one playoff goal until the Cup final, Conacher had arguably the most important strike of the series to date, the opening salvo in a hard fought Game 1 and the Admirals have not trailed heading to Game 3 on Thursday in Toronto. He nearly cleared the glass at Scope Arena when he leapt in celebration.

“I thought he could’ve had four in that game,” Cooper said. “Cory was stretching out Toronto’s defence. When he and Tyler Johnson get out there together, they’re small in stature, but they play huge and they’re a lot of fun to watch.

“The kid is deserving of the accolades he gets. Hopefully there are bigger and better things to come from him at a higher level of hockey.”